A ball grid array (BGA) semiconductor package employs advanced semiconductor packaging technology, in which a substrate has a front side for mounting a semiconductor chip thereon and a back side for disposing a plurality of solder balls thereon, so as to provide high density of I/O connections, and to bond and electrically connect the semiconductor package to an external printed circuit board.
A flip chip ball grid array (FCBGA) semiconductor package is an improved BGA semiconductor package, wherein the semiconductor chip is bonded in an upside down manner to the front side of the substrate via a plurality of solder bumps, and is electrically connected to external devices, thereby making the overall packaging size further reduced.
However, after the semiconductor chip is placed in position on the substrate, a cavity (hereinafter called “undercavity”) is formed between the semiconductor chip and the substrate at intervals between the adjacent solder bumps. If this undercavity is not filled with an insulative material, due to the difference in coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between the chip and the substrate, during a temperature cycle in subsequent processes, the chip and the substrate respectively suffer different thermal stress, thereby easily resulting in structural cracks or electricity loss. Therefore, in such a FCBGA semiconductor package, a flip chip underfilling process is necessarily performed to fill the undercavity with an insulative material such as epoxy resin, so as to strengthening the semiconductor structure.
The flip chip underfilling technology has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,101 titled as “Leadless Integrated Circuit Package” and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,234 titled as “Semiconductor Device with Controlled Spread Polymeric Underfill”. However, this technology has the following drawbacks. First, it is time-consuming. In such a flip chip underfilling process, the insulative material is filled in a capillary filling manner around the chip; thus, the material filling is often too slow with voids easily being formed. Further, as recited in “Encapsulants Used in Flip-Chip Package” by Suryanarayna et al, the filling time is reported to be proportional to the square of the chip length; as the size of the chip increases, the filling time is prolonged, thereby making the yield further reduced. Besides, an ideal underfilling material is characterized with good fluidity and wettability, and in order to avoid improper thermal stress generated from the underfilling material against the solder bumps, a solid filler is usually added to the underfilling material, making the underfilling material with the solid filler more similar in CTE to the solder bumps. However, the addition of the solid filler greatly increases the viscosity and cost of the underfilling material.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,136 discloses a molded underfilling technology. As shown in FIG. 1, a FCBGA semiconductor package 1 comprises a substrate 10 having a front surface 100 and a back surface 101, wherein a chip bonding area 102 is pre-defined on the front surface 100 of the substrate 10; a semiconductor chip 12 reflowed on the chip bonding area 102 of the substrate 10 in flip-chip manner via a plurality of solder bumps 11; a solder mask 16 for covering the back surface 101 of the substrate 10 in a manner as to expose a plurality of ball pads 18, which are implanted with a plurality of solder balls (not shown) thereon; and a particular encapsulating material 19 for encapsulating the semiconductor chip 12 and the solder bumps 11. This encapsulating material 19 is a low viscous epoxy resin containing a solid filler in 70% to 90%, and the solid filler consists of fine particles of silicon and quartz with a particle diameter of 0.01-0.05 mm.
The molded underfilling technology is characterized in that, after mounting the semiconductor chip 12 on the substrate 10, a molding process is performed in accompany with a cavity between the chip 12 and the substrate 10 being underfilled, and the encapsulating material 19 is injected into a mold (not shown) with a plurality of air vents 17 connected to the external for ventilating excess air so as to eliminate the occurrence of voids. However, due to the encapsulating material 19 having low viscosity (high fluidity) and fine fillers, it often unavoidably flashes around the air vents 17 after completing the molding process, as shown in FIG. 2. This therefore seriously deteriorates the quality and appearance of the FCBGA semiconductor package 1.
The use of such an encapsulating material having low viscosity and fine fillers helps reduce the filling and curing time. If this encapsulating material is applied to a conventional BGA semiconductor package, in correspondence to densely distributed bonding wires and small bond pitch of 50 μm or below formed on a semiconductor chip in the semiconductor package, the encapsulating material used in a molding process can therefore effectively reduce filling impact generated during injecting the encapsulating material, and prevent wire sweep from occurrence. However, the flash problem still can not be eliminated when the encapsulating material flows through a plurality of air vents located at corners, as shown in the drawing. Thus, how to solve the flash problem is a critical subject to endeavor.